'Palace File' Bogs Down In Sloppy Editing

December 21, 1986|By Reviewed by Cauncey G. Parker III, Special to The Sentinel

To read this book is to relive the maddening agony of those four endless years required to extricate U.S. forces from Vietnam. Remember the months and months of wrangling over the size and configuration of the negotiating table for the peace talks in Paris, even as the casualties mounted with each passing day?

The palace file, from which this book's title derives, consisted of secret letters, messages and proposals -- hitherto unpublished -- exchanged among Presidents Nixon, Ford and Nguyen Van Thieu from Dec. 31, 1971 through March 22, 1975. Thieu safeguarded the file in his bedroom at the presidential palace, mistakenly believing the letters meant what they promised and were therefore his ace in the hole.

In August, 1969, Nixon sought to expedite the still-meandering peace process by secretly dispatching Henry Kissinger to Paris to commence direct negotiations with Le Duc Tho, North Vietnam's Politburo member charged with pursuing the war in South Vietnam. Only after the talks were launched was Thieu informed, by which time he had no choice but to go along. The incident was to prove a grim harbinger of things to come. Time and again, the hapless Thieu was maneuvered into agreeing to concessions after the fact, in exchange for written presidential assurances that the U.S. would intervene militarily should North Vietnam ever be so rash as to breach the terms of the peace agreement. So much for promises.

Clearly, Kissinger is perceived here as the principal villain of the piece, as a dissembler obsessed by a finely cultivated sense of self- preservation at whatever the cost to others, in this case South Vietnam. Indeed, the reader can easily empathize with Thieu's rueful conclusion at one point that ''whenever Kissinger was involved, South Vietnam had come out badly.'' And judging from subsequent events, the agreement Kissinger negotiated on South Vietnam's behalf with Le Duc Tho (for which they shared a Nobel Peace Prize) turned out to be every bit the disaster Thieu anticipated.

Because of its interpretative nature and step-by-step examination of events, this is a complicated book. The abundance of unfamiliar Vietnamese names of people and places also makes for some difficult reading. Additionally, again and again, material appears to have been transcribed directly -- and redundantly -- from notes. We have ''Thieu did not take Kissinger seriously,'' and then, ''Thieu could not imagine Kissinger was serious,'' followed by an observer saying, ''but we never paid serious attention.'' Such sloppy editing is surprising for a work of this quality and highly annoying. Worse, it saps a reader's much-needed concentration.

Although the title page credits two authors, Hung predominates, recording events as a government insider, first as Thieu's eyes and ears in Washington and ultimately as one of his ministers in Saigon. Hung writes with a remarkable lack of rancor, given the depth of his conviction of America's betrayal. He admirably conveys the creeping desperation of one nation fighting for survival having to rely wholly on another nation, whose by-then overriding goal was to get the Vietnam nightmare behind it. For those interested in acquiring an in-depth collateral perspective of a tragic era, The Palace File will warrant a second reading.